VCS BIOS Related Discussions

[imajeff]

On 7/5/2021 at 11:43 AM, 0_obeWAN said:

Many thanks for these links and hats off to @ArcadeHustle. Bravo, even if I didn't really understand everything. 
It still seems to smell pretty good ^^ for whoever wants to go digging into the guts of the beast. 
I don't know the Apertis system, I don't know much about Linux either, but from what I've seen Apertis 2021 is a sort of "media-center" or on-board browser but it seems to handle audio and video?

I think it will speak to some people (or not) but now I'm dreaming of an equivalent of multiMAN (PS3) or even better XBMC (Xbox). So many good memories for the ones I have left.

 

 

I'm glad also for the AtariVCSRoot links, even if I don't do it on mine yet.

If I'm understanding, I think the hack assumes first you can boot into your own Linux on the machine and mount the Atari partitions so you can edit the files.

After you make the edits then you would be able to reboot into Atari OS and it would have the backdoor so you could get a command prompt (ssh) from another computer on the LAN, and have root access inside Atari VCS 800 as it is running.

 

Pretty awesome to me, helps to have the true hacker mindset.

[leech]

On 7/5/2021 at 11:43 AM, 0_obeWAN said:

Many thanks for these links and hats off to @ArcadeHustle. Bravo, even if I didn't really understand everything. 
It still seems to smell pretty good ^^ for whoever wants to go digging into the guts of the beast. 
I don't know the Apertis system, I don't know much about Linux either, but from what I've seen Apertis 2021 is a sort of "media-center" or on-board browser but it seems to handle audio and video?

I think it will speak to some people (or not) but now I'm dreaming of an equivalent of multiMAN (PS3) or even better XBMC (Xbox). So many good memories for the ones I have left.

 

I have wondered if Apertis is what Tesla uses on their tablets.  Really would not surprise me, and I believe the project's page says it is for Automotive uses.

Edited July 31, 2021 by leech

[SizzleAtari]

So, I will be upgrading the Ram to 16 tomorrow, hopefully it goes well, but I know I'll need to get into the Bios to change the speed from 2666 to 3200 mhz, hopefully someone knows the password.

Edited August 22, 2021 by SizzleAtari

[andymanone]

9 hours ago, SizzleAtari said:

So, I will be upgrading the Ram to 16 tomorrow, hopefully it goes well, but I know I'll need to get into the Bios to change the speed from 2666 to 3200 mhz, hopefully someone knows the password.

It was changed by ATARI last times by Firmware updates...

 

But you can take a look at the -> VCS Password Thread

 

Cheers,

andY

[Djmicklovin]

My VCS is showing default settings after the latest update. Went into the BIOS and it shows my RAM speed is still increased, as well as the dedicated VRAM and CPU wattage. Also the BIOS password is still the same so what the hell happened? Somebody help.

Edited September 6, 2021 by Djmicklovin

[Zoyx]

15 hours ago, Djmicklovin said:

My VCS is showing default settings after the latest update. Went into the BIOS and it shows my RAM speed is still increased, as well as the dedicated VRAM and CPU wattage. Also the BIOS password is still the same so what the hell happened? Somebody help.

Yeah it is weird. After the firmware update, secure boot was still turned off, and my boot loader worked as it should. But my memory overclocks and my added graphics memory weren't showing up on GPU-Z when I booted into Windows. I had to go in and make a subtle change in the bios, then hit F10 to save. Then changes showed up in GPU-Z.

[Djmicklovin]

1 hour ago, Zoyx said:

Yeah it is weird. After the firmware update, secure boot was still turned off, and my boot loader worked as it should. But my memory overclocks and my added graphics memory weren't showing up on GPU-Z when I booted into Windows. I had to go in and make a subtle change in the bios, then hit F10 to save. Then changes showed up in GPU-Z.

Yeah my task manager shows stock settings. What subtle change? What do I need to do?

[Zoyx]

Just hit F10 while in the bios settings, that might be enough.

[imajeff]

Still nobody here has a passw after the "celebrate" one? I searched the other threads but only this one seems current (until now). I wish they let users have control of their own computers, like they said they would.

[stirrell]

21 minutes ago, imajeff said:

Still nobody here has a passw after the "celebrate" one? I searched the other threads but only this one seems current (until now). I wish they let users have control of their own computers, like they said they would.

My system is up-to-date and the Celebrate password worked for me. Not discounting what you are saying but the password is working on my end. You are definitely not the only person reporting this issue so I wonder what the difference could be.

[imajeff]

15 hours ago, stirrell said:

My system is up-to-date and the Celebrate password worked for me. Not discounting what you are saying but the password is working on my end. You are definitely not the only person reporting this issue so I wonder what the difference could be.

Oh thanks, I had only tried it once but is working now. So maybe I typed it wrong and then believed it must have changed because others said it did.

Best to change it to something easier for me to type, or some people just make it no password but I like having one.
 

[Dr Luveno]

The "Atar!C3l3br8te$50Ye4r$" password does NOT work for me.  

 

I picked up a VCS 800 with the idea of using it as an upgrade to my Celeron J4125-based Batocera box. I plugged in the VCS and played around with it stock, letting it update and everything. After having my fun with the out-of-the-box experience, I went off to go play with Batocera on it.

 

I went to boot Batocera via USB, and I was a bit surprised by getting prevented from doing so due to security policy, but figured that was just something I could reconfigure in the BIOS. I hop into the BIOS (now updated to v23) and get password prompted. A little bit of Googling later, I see the "piano" and "celebrate" passwords and have at it. Nothing works. Small case "L", upper case "I" and so on. I used three different keyboards, different USB slots for them, no luck.  I contacted support and they confirmed that the "celebrate" password should work.

 

Doing some more Googling, apparently I'm not the only one dealing with this, but it appears inconsistent, with some folks being able to get in with the "celebrate" password and others not. I'll be driving back later this week to return this, unless someone has other ideas on how I can get Batocera booted on this thing.  I know I could install Ubuntu and Retropie, but Retropie it is a bit more janky than I'd prefer (it's what I had on my Celeron J4125 box before going with Batocera).

Edited November 29, 2021 by Dr Luveno
formatting

[zzip]

14 hours ago, Dr Luveno said:

The "Atar!C3l3br8te$50Ye4r$" password does NOT work for me.  

 

I picked up a VCS 800 with the idea of using it as an upgrade to my Celeron J4125-based Batocera box. I plugged in the VCS and played around with it stock, letting it update and everything. After having my fun with the out-of-the-box experience, I went off to go play with Batocera on it.

 

I went to boot Batocera via USB, and I was a bit surprised by getting prevented from doing so due to security policy, but figured that was just something I could reconfigure in the BIOS. I hop into the BIOS (now updated to v23) and get password prompted. A little bit of Googling later, I see the "piano" and "celebrate" passwords and have at it. Nothing works. Small case "L", upper case "I" and so on. I used three different keyboards, different USB slots for them, no luck.  I contacted support and they confirmed that the "celebrate" password should work.

 

Doing some more Googling, apparently I'm not the only one dealing with this, but it appears inconsistent, with some folks being able to get in with the "celebrate" password and others not. I'll be driving back later this week to return this, unless someone has other ideas on how I can get Batocera booted on this thing.  I know I could install Ubuntu and Retropie, but Retropie it is a bit more janky than I'd prefer (it's what I had on my Celeron J4125 box before going with Batocera).

Batocera uses "Emulation Station" as it's front end, so you could possibly install Emulation Station on Ubuntu or Windows and get a similar experience, if you can't get the BIOS issue sorted.

 

I think there was a password or two in between "Piano" and "Celebrate".   Have you tried any others besides those two?

 

 

[leech]

You can use straight Debian, easier to customize than Ubuntu.

[Zoyx]

There was a thread on Facebook of a person having trouble with the celebrate password. After a passage of time, it suddenly worked. No idea what changed. Make sure you are typing a zero and not an upper case o.

[Dr Luveno]

5 hours ago, zzip said:

Batocera uses "Emulation Station" as it's front end, so you could possibly install Emulation Station on Ubuntu or Windows and get a similar experience, if you can't get the BIOS issue sorted.

 

I was using Retropie-on-Ubuntu previously on the Celeron J4125 box the VCS was supposed to replace, and the experience was considerably more janky (bluetooth controllers, certain cores configs that I could never seem to get right, etc) than what Batocera provides out of the box.

 

Given that I wanted this to be as console-ish as possible, it's Batocera-or-bust for me.

Edited November 30, 2021 by Dr Luveno
clarity

[zzip]

27 minutes ago, Dr Luveno said:

I was using Retropie-on-Ubuntu previously on the Celeron J4125 box the VCS was supposed to replace, and the experience was considerably more janky (bluetooth controllers, certain cores configs that I could never seem to get right, etc) than what Batocera provides out of the box.

 

Given that I wanted this to be as console-ish as possible, it's Batocera-or-bust for me.

Batocera does work really well on VCS-  I was impressed with it.   Hopefully the password issue works itself out for you

[Dr Luveno]

46 minutes ago, zzip said:

Batocera does work really well on VCS-  I was impressed with it.   Hopefully the password issue works itself out for you

Thanks!  I hope so too.  I really like the hardware design, this really would have been perfect.  Support has escalated my case, we'll see what else they come up with.  

[roadrunner]

12345
 

[justclaws]

11 hours ago, Dr Luveno said:

The "Atar!C3l3br8te$50Ye4r$" password does NOT work for me.  

[...]

Doing some more Googling, apparently I'm not the only one dealing with this, but it appears inconsistent, with some folks being able to get in with the "celebrate" password and others not. I'll be driving back later this week to return this, unless someone has other ideas on how I can get Batocera booted on this thing. [...]

There is no other password, so indeed it's baffling to me right now, how some can be different.
If the system password is changed, the BIOS update will also not work, so if your BIOS updated,
it makes no sense that you cannot now access boot options (which is where secure-boot is set).
Atar!C3l3br8te$50Ye4r$
....<pling>..<ell>........<zero>..<four>..

I'm not disputing what you say, I'm just expressing my inability to understand what is happening,
in these very isolated cases. I think it's 4 users now, I've seen, across the net. Atari give out this
password, it's not leaked, and they have committed not to change it, so it's not a moving target.

There was one other, which only 1 or 2 people seem to have encountered, earlier in this thread,
but that would be on original shipment systems which had been partially updated, but then not
updated again since. A new unopened retail unit which has updated, should be "celebrating". ?


As to Batocera, yes, they have not shipped an ISO yet with a secure-boot startup, like Ubuntu
or Fedora. It's possible to add the packages of Batocera to Debian/Ubuntu, on which it's based.

[Dr Luveno]

5 minutes ago, justclaws said:

There is no other password, so indeed it's baffling to me right now, how some can be different.
If the system password is changed, the BIOS update will also not work, so if your BIOS updated,
it makes no sense that you cannot now access boot options (which is where secure-boot is set).
Atar!C3l3br8te$50Ye4r$
....<pling>..<ell>........<zero>..<four>..

I'm not disputing what you say, I'm just expressing my inability to understand what is happening,
in these very isolated cases. I think it's 4 users now, I've seen, across the net. Atari give out this
password, it's not leaked, and they have committed not to change it, so it's not a moving target.

There was one other, which only 1 or 2 people seem to have encountered, earlier in this thread,
but that would be on original shipment systems which had been partially updated, but then not
updated again since. A new unopened retail unit which has updated, should be "celebrating". ?


As to Batocera, yes, they have not shipped an ISO yet with a secure-boot startup, like Ubuntu
or Fedora. It's possible to add the packages of Batocera to Debian/Ubuntu, on which it's based.

Thank you for your thoughts on this.  Yeah, it's a head-scratcher.  And I've typed that darn password in so many times now that I'm starting to go loopy, and second- and third-guessing myself ("did I type it correctly?  what did I just type?").  I've done my fair share of sysadmin-y work professionally since the mid-90s so I should know what I'm doing, and this is literally just typing in a password.  It certainly doesn't help that the BIOS interface asterisks out your typing, but 100+ attempts across three keyboards I'm guessing that typos are not the problem here.  I've tried different USB ports, ethernet cable plugged/unplugged, mouse and controller plugged/unplugged, and no dice.

 

[Dr Luveno]

1 hour ago, roadrunner said:

12345
 

That's the kinda thing an idiot would have on his luggage!

[leech]

1 hour ago, justclaws said:

It's possible to add the packages of Batocera to Debian/Ubuntu, on which it's based.

Yeah, I would go this route!  Install a basic Debian off of a netinstall, add the Batocera repo and install it.  Problem solved.

[Dr Luveno]

36 minutes ago, leech said:

Yeah, I would go this route!  Install a basic Debian off of a netinstall, add the Batocera repo and install it.  Problem solved.

 

I just ran down this route, choosing to plug in an external Easy Store powered USB drive that I had laying around and install Debian 11 onto it on the VCS.  The Easy Store had been shucked of its original 14TB drive for use in my Plex server, and I had an old 4TB WD Red that I put in it (not relevant, but I thought I'd include this detail).  I successfully installed Debian on the external drive on the VCS, but could not get the VCS to boot from it, with the VCS instead just booting into the onboard OS.  Not wanting to waste any more time on it, I went back to the BIOS password thing.  I didn't really want to go down this route anyway, strongly preferring a Buildroot -> Recalbox -> Batocera setup instead of vanilla Debian/Ubuntu + Batocera on top.

 

Anyway, because of the attempted Debian install, I had a mouse plugged into the VCS as well.  When I entered the BIOS and tried to access the secure boot menu, for whatever reason I clicked into the password dialog box with the mouse and to my surprise an onscreen keyboard popped up.  I tried entering the "celebrate" password using only the onscreen keyboard and still got the invalid password message.  So if this is still a PEBCAK error, it isn't due to my physical keyboard nor any typos.  Unless I get a Hail Mary from somewhere, I'm going to have to return the VCS to Micro Center.  

 

 

 

[+Stephen]

3 hours ago, roadrunner said:

12345
 

That's the kind of password an idiot would use on his luggage!